Moses Merrill Mission

The Moses Merrill Mission, also known as the Oto Mission, was located about eight miles west of Bellevue, Nebraska. It was built and occupied by Moses and Eliza Wilcox Merrill, the first missionaries resident in Nebraska. The first building was part of facilities built in 1835 when the United States Government removed the Otoe about eight miles southwest of Bellevue. Merrill's goal was to convert the local Otoe tribe to Christianity; he had learned the language and translated the Bible and some hymns into Otoe.The first log cabin had to be replaced after it burned, but by 1835 they had built a combined school/church building. After Merrill died in 1840 from tuberculosis, the Otoe left the mission and moved their village. His wife Eliza Merrill returned to the East with their son. Settlers used the cabin into the 1860s.As of 2005, the only remainders of the second and larger mission building are its original chimney and the cottonwood trees planted by Eliza Merrill. As of July 2016, the last remaining cottonwood tree was torn down. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The state has placed a highway historical marker near the former site of the Oto Mission.HistoryThe Reverend Moses Merrill was from Sedgwick, Maine, where his father Daniel was a minister. He went to the Michigan Territory and through friends met Eliza Wilcox from Albany, New York. They married and, after receiving training as missionaries for the Baptist Church, they arrived in Bellevue, Nebraska in 1833. The Indian agent offered them space in the former trading post called Fontenelle's, then part of buildings used by the Bellevue Indian Agency. Merrill immediately took up studying the Otoe language and later translated parts of the Bible and some hymns into Otoe.